Vicky Hepler - Meet your loving guidance associate

Hi, my name's Vicky Hepler and I have been in early childhood for thirty years, twenty-seven of which I've been in the classroom. I have a lot of experience in early childhood. I love working with, really, birth to five, but I also am very comfortable working with first, second and third-grade as well. I'm a parent right now of two teenagers and my Conscious Discipline journey began before I had children. So I knew the I Love You rituals and some other things that helped me connect with my children when they were small. So I feel like I can help parents be successful implementing Conscious Discipline, too. I was amazed at the difference that it made in the children, and in myself, in my personal life and at school with my colleagues, but most importantly in the classroom. I saw children that I would've lost come around and become part of what was going on in the classroom. To me that was huge, that was what it was all about. I had another little boy, he had cerebral palsy in his jaw and his hands. It was very localized, but he had a lot of issues. He drooled all the time and so it was the kind of kid that normally when you go into kindergarten, you might have kids that would be hurtful, and I think kids are hurtful just because they're scared, they don't understand. So I went on home visits to all the children but I told the families there's going to be a little boy, he doesn't talk, he drools, and he seems different on the outside but on the inside he's just like you and me. So then he comes to school and the kids were prepared. They knew how to deal with him. We taught him different hand signals so we could communicate with him. But after just two weeks of school, the SLD teacher who pulled him out for other issues, but anyway, came to pull him out. It takes two weeks to come get him, and we're lined up after lunch, coming in from the playground, everyone's crazy and he said come with me and the boys and girls were all doing the I love you hand symbol to him, the sign language, and they're tapping him. He was in our school last year in the VE Pre-K, and she said, what's going on here? I've never seen this? They love him, they accept him. And I said, that's Conscious Discipline. We built a school family. They love and accept him just like they love and accept everybody. And that was after just two weeks. Then at a parent conference at the end of the year, a parent thanked me because she said I feel like my five-year-old has learned tolerance before they even learned to read. I am very warm and I'm very passionate and I'm very engaging, and people feel very safe and comfortable. So when I share the ideas, its non-threatening and they feel my excitement, they feel my passion and so it might give them the courage to try something that they haven't tried before. My strongest point would probably be the fact that I was in the classroom, that I did it, and so when you come in, you get the theory but you also get ideas that you can take back and use in the classroom right away to make a difference. People have told me that I've inspired them. That I've given them hope that things can be different and that they can do this. Dr. Jeanne Feldman is the queen of ideas in early childhood, if you're in early childhood, you know about Dr. Jeanne Feldman. I've had more than one person tell me that I'm the Dr. Jeanne of Conscious Discipline because I give you a few ideas to use in your classroom to help you start implementing Conscious Discipline and then your own creative juices start flowing and it becomes your own, and see that's what it's all about. It's about taking the information and then making it your own so that it works for you.